Mass Effect: Onward!

This whole time I've been enjoying Mass Effect, but I haven't gotten that "OH WOW" moment. It was bout to happen.

I flew the Normandy back to the Citadel to restock and finish some side missions, when Girard, an Alliance officer calls me up to help with a suicidal woman. This isn't just a girl who had a breakup and wants to end it all. Talitha is a severely traumatized girl who has been enslaved, beaten and now escaped captivity from a group of batarians. As I approached her it seems it was a bit too fast, and slowly take a step back. Shepard then begins to talk to her, and learn her story, of her escape, what they did to her, and the damage it caused. With each question taking a step forward. Finally, Shepard gains her confidence and convinces her to take a sedative to calm her down, and let Girard get her to psychiatric help.

This sequence hit me in a way I wasn't expecting. I went into it crouching, pretending to be sneaky and not taking it very seriously. And after the dialogue ended, and the girl fell unconscious in Shepard's arms and the emotions hit me. It was so cerebral and completely unexpected. I've not really experienced something similar in a game before.

Onward.

Anderson lets us know that a salarian infiltration team (STG) has uncovered Saren's base on planet Virmire. So we take the Normandy down to begin to stage our assault on the base. On the ground we are met with the Salarian team, lead by Captain Kirrahe. Kirrahe tells us that the facility is actually being used to breed an army of modified Krogan warriors. Now, if you aren't familiar with ME lore, the Krogans have undergone a Genophage created by the Salarians, that leaves them with only a 1% birth rate. This news of a cure upsets Wrex. He wants to save the facility, fuck off the the cure, and essentially join Saren and betray Shepard. Well, due to my silver tongue I talked him down, having him see how this version of Krogans are not right, and would have all kinds of unknowns and icky things wrong with them. Even though still, at this point Wrex wasn't my favorite, this little interaction made him grow on me. I was glad I could use my powers of persuasion in a positive position.

With that crisis averted, Kirrahe splits off the team taking Kaiden with in a frontal assault, leaving Shepard with a small infiltration group. He then gives a rather winded speech about past Salarian exploits and how they could "HOLD THE LINE" (repeatedly) and then, then we were off.

Shepard kills a lot of Geth, finds the cloning facility, and then stumbles into Saren's personal lab. There we find another Prothean beacon, and of course touch it and....BWORM. Sovereign itself speaks to Shepard. Sovereign is not just a ship, but a super advanced AI called a Reaper. The Geth consider it an AI god, hence why they are following it. He then lays down how the Reapers hang on the edge of Milky Way dark space, allowing sentient races to evolve, and after a millennia, the Reapers awaken and ravage all life in the galaxy. He drops a bit about a Conduit, which Shepard believes to be some kind of Reaper weapon. Then, he informs us that the Protheans were not the creators of the Mass Relays, like we thought, but the previous in a long cycle of harvested races. I'd like to point out that Liara mentioned it seemed like the Protheans becoming extinct seems like it was following a cycle, but FUCKING NOBODY gave her any mind to that theory.

Shepard points out to Sovereign that she is indeed a badass and won't be so easy to harvest like all those other species.

We truck it out of the lab and start planting the nuke. But like a total super-hero villain, Saren shows up on his silver-surfer board and tries to stop us. He thinks that allying himself with the Reapers will show how organic life can be 'useful' to them and thus save organic life. Yeah right. Shepard puts a few bullets in him before he fucks off. AND because of this asshole's attack, someone has to stay behind to arm the bomb, and the other has to follow Shepard to the AA towers to clear a path for the Normandy. I chose to sacrifice Kaiden, because he was bland, and angry. Ashley just seemed like she could make more of life.

Back aboard the Normandy I spoke to everyone about the recent mission. Nobody /wanted/ Kaiden to die, but it seemed like only the humans were upset about it.